More Thanks ...

[This post and the previous one are Parker's responses to the comments on this post.]

Once again, I'm very glad I decided to do this, because I'm learning so much from the folks who write in. Here are a few responses to the latest entries:

Sandie, many thanks for your affirmation of the core idea of heartbreak and of the power of the Courage to Teach program to help ”crack our armor.” For me, two very important statements in your entry -- real keepers! -- are these: “I live in a world where isolation is a code word for safety…” and “Democracy is too precious to leave anyone on the margin.” If small groups of folks can come together in the workplace and other daily venues of our common life and learn to break through our isolation, that “habit of the heart” can carry over into the body politic and help reduce the marginalization that undermines the vision of a government of, by and for the people. It's slow, painstaking work, infrastructural work, but I've seen it happen, I've seen it spread, and we need lots more of it. One of the big lessons of our current economic crisis is that ignoring infrastructure over the past forty years, and grabbing for the “quick fix” instead, helps pave the road to ruin. So thanks for the reminder of these critical root-system issues, and of the fact that there are ways to do something about it -- including the Circle of Trust model that the Center has to offer.

Paul, as usual, I find you right on target with specifics. And, as always, I am grateful. As I read your list of six questions, each with well-defined dimensions, I thought you were quite gentlemanly to call our current conversation about health care “substantially below what we and our democracy could have.” The “death panel” debate looks downright debased, even demonic alongside your grounded and thoughtful approach to this critical issue. In this book, I want to address the question of how to reopen “the public square” to many voices, including the voices of people like you who have immense credibility in various work arenas, credibility based on long experience of the sort you have in medical education and health care reform. How do we get your voice more clearly into the health care debate? How do we get the voices of seasoned public school educators into the school reform debate? More and more, it seems, the people who know the least about a field have the most power over forming public policy for that field. How do we give people like you more leverage on these things? No easy answers, but your blog entry reminds me of how important the question is.

Carol, many thanks for lifting up the critical role of grief and mourning in “the politics of the brokenhearted” via your vivid example and very helpful thoughts. I am reminded of the “despair work” Joanna Macy has been doing with people for many years -- to clear the ground for the work of hope. I think you are right-on when you speak about our need as individuals to mourn our losses deeply and well before we can start to heal, a hard thing to do in a culture where the answer is always “Fine!” when you ask people how they are. And my answer to your great question “Is it possible that the same principle is at work in the national voice for democracy - before authentic discourse can take place we might consider first mourning our losses together?” is a resounding YES!

Rachel, thank you for stating so vividly and concisely why it is that we need to create social spaces that allow for genuine reflection and soulful human encounters in the midst of all the madness. While I agree with you that we don't want to demonize the media, we also know that one of the classic methods of social control is to keep people so busy and so continually distracted that they cannot get together to think through the deeper issues and, perhaps, generate some form of collective power to create positive change. I know more than a few people (and I know that you do, too) who feel that the bureaucracy they work in harasses them with paperwork not for the sake of good data but to keep them from agitating for change -- “pecked to death by ducks” is one way to describe it! And what you and I both know is that the Center's Circles of Trust offer one model of the kind of space we need, a space that has allowed many hard-pressed people to return to booming, buzzing confusion of the workaday world with new focus and clarity about what's important. When I think about the way conventional “news” tends less to inform us than to drive us out of our minds, I think of the deeper kind of news we can get from spaces of this sort, the kind of news the poet William Carlos Williams names in these lines:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Cat, thank you for your good questions, astute observations, and encouragement. I like the notion that our national discourse has changed since the 1930's, at least in some sectors of the society, toward more generous kinds of questions, such as those about compassion and mutual “hearing.” Your observation about the way genuine suffering exists and will continue to exist is one of the themes at the heart of this book; I'm going to be writing in more detail about how we can stand and act in “the tragic gap,” the gap between what is and what we know to be possible, without flipping out into irrelevant idealism or corrosive cynicism. And I really appreciate the way you pointed to a couple of places where I may have been more smart-aleck than smart! Your counsel to walk in other people's shoes is something I need to keep hearing, though I am not sure I can write a book Sarah Palin would read; I understand she keeps very busy reading all the magazines and newspapers that cross her desk. But I will do my best!

Caroline and Tim, I just found your good entries when I got online to submit these responses -- I will try to respond to what you said the next time around. And Tim, I have warm memories of my visit to your school; I especially recall a great open conversation with a room full of marvelous teachers. Please greet them for me.

Comments

Gage |11-21-2009 I was caught by your response to Vera. You wrote of people on opposite sides of difficult issues like abortion who could finally hear each other when they listened to each other’s stories. I was reminded of a conversation early in my career. A colleague and I struggled together with the issue of creating a safe space for students to express ideas she found abhorrent. Both of us understood that squelching another’s voice wouldn’t create learning or change. But she couldn’t find it in her to sit and listen openly, let alone welcome, those ideas. I wish I had know then of the power of stories. I think it would have helped us. In reflecting on this conversation, I came again to your writings on the power of paradox. The paradox of democracy means that we have to find a way to cope with the expression of ideas that are themselves antithetical to democracy. It seems to me this paradox is a central facet of democracy and our inability to live in that paradox is part of our current challenge. The idea that part of my responsibility as a citizen is to listen to ideas I find abhorrent is hard enough. To go a step further and invite someone into a discussion - that most of us don’t know how to do. Because collectively we don’t know how to do this, we don’t trust that our political leaders are listening and we certainly don’t trust that people on ‘the other side’ are listening. Robert Greenleaf wrote in The Servant Leader that ‘the servant as leader always empathizes, always accepts the person but sometimes refuses to accept some of the person’s effort or performance as good enough…” This is part of the paradox of democracy – we have to find ways to empathize with another’s pain while still standing against ideas that are harmful to others or that can destroy our attempt at democracy. Perhaps one reason our ‘town hall’ model of discourse no longer works is our lack of empathy, our inability or unwillingness to bear another’s pain. One person or a panel at the front of the room with everyone else in the audience is from the traditional model of power. It encourages talking ‘at’ more than talking ‘with’; it doesn’t create a space where participants can listen to each other. We have many models for real discussion, for deep listening. These are models that reach for the democratic ideal of each person’s voice being heard, but I don’t see them being used in the public arena. It seems to me that we need to help our leaders come down from the dais and out from behind the podium to find a way to listen to and to bear the pain. Perhaps then we can have real discussions about important issues rather than shouting matches. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas. As always, your willingness to be open in your quest for understanding helps deepen my thinking and my willingness to be braver in my work.

Gage Paine |12-17-2009 Parker, if even a portion of the readers of your new book have an experience like mine, you will have a profound impact. I keep finding things that make me think about what you have written so far. Today I was re-reading Peter Senge's introduction to Joseph Jaworski's book 'Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership' and these words jumped out at me: "And yet almost all of us carry around a deep sense of resignation. We're resigned to believing we can't have any influence in the world, at least not on a scale that matters. So we focus on the small scale, where we think we can have an influence. ... But deep down, we're resigned to being absolutely powerless in the larger world." Jaworski talks/writes about the need for "fundamental shifts of mind", "a shift from seeing a world made up of things to seeing a world that's open and primarily made up of relationships." "When this fundamental shift of mind occurs, our sense of identity shifts too, and we begin to accept each other as legitimate human beings." It's been good to return to this book and though I'm sure it's not new to you, I was so struck by its relevance to what you are considering that I wanted to bring it (back) to your attention. I hope it's helpful in some small way. Best wishes on your important endeavor and for the holiday season and the New Year.

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